You
by Emily31594
Summary: In which Robin stares at Regina sometimes and she starts to wonder why. Long-established OQ. Domestic fluff, really.


For someonethatiamnot who requested an expansion of a little text post I made.

At first Regina doesn't notice anything in particular about it, glancing at Robin's reflection in the bathroom mirror. He loops an arm around her waist, craning for enough water to wet his toothbrush as she throws water on her face to rinse off the last remnants of makeup remover. And there that look is again, when she chuckles and she catches him smirking back in the mirror, his hand lingering and squeezing her waist.

He's always been looking at her, from the day they met, staring at her and into her and seeing far too much.

Some good—_You have the touch of a mother _he'd said, the only person who has ever seemed to see motherhood as the defining part of her identity that it is. _A second chance_, what he'd seen in her.

And some bad—the craze of the Evil Queen, the reality of her destruction.

(When they were apart, his gaze had burned into her always in that way, as they stood at opposite ends of the room and planned to defeat the Snow Queen.)

But this—this is different. Tender, not seeing too much, seeing just enough, seeing _her. _Warm and affectionate and smiling, but heavier when put together.

"I'm completely enthralling while removing mascara, hmm?" she teases, patting her face dry with the hand towel he offers. He's well used to this routine by now, as is she, the dance they do every night in getting ready for bed in their shared bathroom.

"Completely," he agrees, nudging his nose affectionately into her hair, planting a kiss there before he pulls back.

—

A few days later and she's rolling out pastry dough for a pie to bring to dinner at the Charmings. Strawberry rhubarb, because even Regina doesn't find irony funny enough to make apple. There's some flour around the kitchen. Not _that _much; Regina Mills is neat. But some, certainly, on about half of the counter, and whitening the front of her apron, and probably, if the dry and pasty texture against her skin is any indication, a little on her cheek and forehead.

A chunk of hair falls into her eye for the second time since she started, and, loathe to get that floury as well, she sticks out her bottom lip and blows air upwards to try and clear the piece away. No luck. Robin's calloused thumb meets her skin then, tucking the offending piece gently behind her ear, making her aware for the first time that he's in the room, across from her on the other side of the kitchen island.

"I didn't know you were home yet?" she asks, and normally she'd hold a hand to his face for a second, kiss him in greeting. She gestures to her dirtied hands (and face) as explanation. "It's for dinner later."

"You have flour on your chin," he says by way of answer. "_Well_," he amends, tapping her nose and straining to drop a kiss to her forehead, "on your nose too. And your cheeks. And forehead."

"I believe it." She arches an eyebrow, shrugging her shoulders at him, "You have some on your lips, now."

He chuckles, and there it is, that gaze trained on her that makes her a little shy and mostly sort of gooey and totally in love.

"What?"

He hums, smirks, dives for the counter to get a bit of flower on his pointer finger and swipes it across her forehead. "Now it's back," he assures her.

"_Robin_," she whines, not really a whine at all, her voice light, a smile breaking through.

"I have pastry to make," she informs him, thinks _to hell with it_ and curls a hand into his button-up, dragging him in for an across-the-counter kiss that lasts a little longer than she'd planned when his tongue flicks against her lips. She pulls back to wink at him, "and now you have to go change for dinner."

—

Regina loves October for rustling branches and rich colors and Saturday bike rides with Henry and Roland. She does not, however, have any fondness for the budget reports that land on her desk and interfere with her enjoyment of the aforementioned pleasures.

Which is how she finds herself on her couch at 10pm on a Thursday with her feet propped up on the coffee table and a heavy, bound final proposal open in her lap.

"Kids are asleep," Robin announces, flopping onto the couch beside her. "How's it going?"

"Almost done. Maybe half an hour more?" A mug appears in her vision, decaf chai tea that carries heavenly wafts of fall spices to her nose. "You are a god among men, Robin of Locksley," she says as she slides her fingers around the warm ceramic, replacing his.

"I thought I married a _queen_," he protests, lifting her legs at the ankles and pivoting, shifting them into his lap.

She raises an eyebrow at him over the edge of the mug, humming contentedly at the first sip. "I thought you'd rather protest at the thought of being king, seeing as _I _married a thief."

He chuckles as his hands begin to massage her feet, his thumbs pressing into the arches. She'll always welcome a good foot massage, but after an unusually long day in heels, this is heavenly. So good, in fact, that her eyes flutter shut, and when he slides a few fingers under the edge of her cotton pajama pants, she lets out a little bit of a moan in encouragement. Just a little one.

The pads of his fingers swirl against her bare skin. "You are stunning, you know that?"

She blinks her eyes open to smirk at him, and her stomach flutters at the way he's looking at her, eyes wide and soft, imbibing every small detail of her face and voice and gestures. It's as though she's melting, warmth bubbling in her stomach, and his look, though it's not quite a smile, is infectious, has her smiling at him openly and fearlessly.

"What?"

He shakes his head, brushing the pad of one finger across the corner of her mouth.

"I take it you have plans for when I finish?" she asks, curling her toes into his thighs.

His gaze changes, his eyes a little darker, dancing. One of his hands slips off her ankle and trails higher to the inside of her upper thigh.

"My stunning wife has had to work late every evening this week on budget reports that she promises she will finish within thirty minutes," he says, raising both eyebrows at her. "I definitely have plans."

Regina's breath stutters. "Might be forty-five," she amends, lowering her eyes pointedly to the hand that's still stroking her skin, "unless you stop distracting me. Your call."

His face falls the way Roland's does when the cut him off from the ice cream on movie nights, then brightens in an instant. "I'll take a nap," he suggests, flexing his hand into her thigh a final time. "Wake me when you're done. I won't be doing any distracting, then, and I'll have more energy for—errr-_other _activities."

He was wrong about the distraction, though, Regina thinks as she watches the even rise and fall of his chest, the adorably terrible angle of his neck against the back of the sofa that doesn't seem to bother him at all, the way his features soften in sleep, his limp hand still curled around her ankle, half a smile on his lips.

It's forty minutes before she finishes and wakes him.

—

"Gods, I missed you," he pants as she gets her head settled on his chest, aftershocks of pleasure still skittering under her skin.

"It was five days, Robin," she hums, pressing her lips to his chest, "not exactly an age."

Robin shifts his shoulders around on the pillow to get comfortable, his fingers weaving through her hair. "It was six," he reminds her, "Roland decided to have nightmares on Sunday and come sleep with us."

"You're ridiculous," she admonishes, planting a kiss on his chin.

"You love it," he sighs, her hand skating across her shoulder blades, Regina nestling her leg more firmly between his.

"True," she has to agree.

He tilts his forehead down to look at her. Regina pushes hair off his forehead, her free hand skimming over his chest as she searches his face, and there it is again, this gaze she's noticed that makes her insides, her heart melt and flutter and all those other cheesy fairy tale things that happen to the hearts of people in love. "What are you looking at?" she inquires.

Robin catches that hand, holds it over where his heart still pounds a little more quickly than usual. "You."


End file.
